Vibe code a bespoke people researcher and email crafter
Workshop led by:
Alec Walker, President, Stanford Angels & Entrepreneurs Texas Chapter
Hi, I’m Alec Walker. I help run executive education sessions at Stanford’s d.school and at Google, and I help run a part of the Stanford Alumni Association focused on matching startups with angel investors. I’ve started and sold a couple of data science startups, and I’ve helped execute AI projects at companies like Dow, Intel, GM, and Chevron, among others.
Here's a video introducing this workshop:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/16HDrkNBHKOow_GeEZ3_QGpN7gJtZe1L8/view?usp=drive_link
Workshop agenda:
A survey of various tools used to find people's contact information online.
A short interactive lecture on why spamming is a terrible thing to do and how to avoid doing it.
An introduction to Google Suite as an app deployment platform that plays well with email and databases.
An introduction to OpenRouter (use multiple GenAI tools through one API at a discount) and Serper (obtain web search results programmatically)
Vibe coding in Claude Code to build our tool in Google Suite.
Deployment examples.
Context:
You probably have some kind of project going, whether it's a hobby thing or a startup, and you want to get the word out online so that the right people engage with you. Also, you want to learn about automation and vibe coding so that you can create bespoke tools to automate your workflows.
Background:
These days, cold email outreach is broken. Inboxes are flooded. People ignore messages, even good ones, because they feel templated, irrelevant, or inauthentic (maybe they have lots of telltale em dashes—like this—that warn everyone that they're AI generated). What works now isn’t volume; it’s resonance. The best outreach feels warm, even if it’s your first message, because it’s tailored, thoughtful, and clearly comes from someone who "gets it".
That kind of outreach starts before you ever hit “send.” It begins with solidifying a niche for your project and a highly specified profile for your outreach. When you have a clear message, a distinct tone, and a reason people should trust you, your emails don’t feel like cold calls. They feel like a welcome augmentation of existing momentum: "Oh, this person is writing to engage with me about my thing, not to try and sell me their thing."
This workshop is about doing the hard work up front of assembling a contact list that actually wants to hear from you, and for good reason. It's not just a spreadsheet of names, but a community of potential collaborators, customers, mentors, or investors who are highly likely to open, engage, and respond.
This workshop will show you how to do all of that as well as how to automate it, responsibly. We’ll build a tool that uses AI to take your message, understand your tone, research your contacts, and generate bespoke email drafts for you to manually review that match what each individual recipient actually cares about.
If you’re excited to learn how to use AI to actually do something for you (not just chat!) I hope you’ll join my upcoming hands-on workshop, where you’ll build your own AI-powered outreach tool using Claude Code, Google Suite, and custom scripts. Heads up that you’ll also need to create OpenRouter and Serper APIs which will cost you ~$5. Instead of sending generic content to everyone with classic “mail merge,” you’ll be able to craft one message and oversee AI as it customizes the content you’ll send out to each individual recipient. Sound helpful? Let’s build it together.
This workshop is for you if:
You’ve felt stuck reaching out to people, even when you know they should be interested.
You’re sitting on a contact list you’ve never really activated.
You’re curious about how AI can not just help write, but actually research and personalize at scale.
You’re a great fit if:
You want to connect more effectively with collaborators, investors, potential customers, or mentors.
You like the idea of AI helping you write, but you want it to do more than spit out bland templates.
You want to teach AI your tone, not just rely on generic prompts.
You’d rather build something useful today than just talk about what’s possible.
You might be:
A startup founder gearing up to fundraise or sell
A solo consultant trying to grow your pipeline
A nonprofit leader looking to activate your network
A curious technologist or creative excited about real-world automation
In this interactive session, expect:
Real tools, real use cases. You’ll set up a working script that connects to Google Sheets, learns your voice, researches contacts, and sends smart, personal emails.
Live scripting and debugging. You’ll see behind the curtain. No black boxes, just transparent, vibe-coded AI magic using Google Apps Script and prompt engineering best practices.
Beginner-friendly pace. No coding experience needed. If you’ve ever used Google Sheets and written an email, you’re good to go.
A bit of laughter and experimentation. We’ll have fun, get creative, and learn to trust a process that feels more like collaborating with a smart assistant than filling out a rigid form.
By the end, you’ll be able to:
Identify and assemble a quality contact list
Train AI to write in your voice
Automatically research contacts and tailor messaging accordingly
Generate and send custom outreach at scale, with subject lines that actually get clicks
Receive a certificate upon completion of this workshop
This isn’t just an email tool. It’s a confidence builder and a relationship accelerator.
If you’ve got a message worth spreading, we’ll help you make sure it lands.